Chilean author Antonio Skármeta, whose most famous novel became the Academy Award-winning film Il Postino, has written another story that begs for the screen with its swift, dynamic storytelling, rich cast of characters and nicely planned turnarounds and surprises. Jacques, the narrator, is the anemic 21-year-old schoolmaster in Contulmo, an isolated village in southern Chile where the inhabitants are all "secondary figures, not protagonists." He has bronchitis from smoking cheap cigarettes and lives with his mother near the mill. Unfortunately, on the same day that Jacques returned to the village with his teaching certificate, his father disappeared.
In addition to teaching, Jacques translates French poems for the Sunday supplement of the local newspaper, which he submits via the laundry truck driver, sometimes slipping in a poem of his own. Jacques continues his absent father's friendship with the miller, who knows the missing man better than his own family does and mysteriously offers to take Jacques to his first whorehouse, in the larger neighboring town of Angol. While there, Jacques also hopes to buy a birthday present for a student of his, the 15-year-old brother of the 17-year-old girl who has set her heart on the young professor. Out of this slightly raunchy setup, Skármeta skilfully builds his simple drama.
Unexpectedly, when the schoolmaster gets to Angol, not only does he discover a soft-hearted whore in the whorehouse, he also finds his missing father outside the movie theater. He's become the town projectionist, but that's only the first surprise he has in store for his son. And when the young professor finally arrives at his student's climactic birthday party, the gathering is life-changing for more than just Jacques.
All of Skármeta's literary effects are achieved with simple elements and swift, economic strokes; characters are established in only a few words. At 105 pages, told in ultra-short chapters of just several hundred words each, A Distant Father is a cunning little novella that manages to pull off a couple of surprising emotional wallops that would be remarkable in any much longer work. The magical last sentence perfectly sums up everything you need to know and, long afterward, will linger fondly in memory. --Nick DiMartino, Nick's Picks, University Book Store, Seattle, Wash.
Shelf Talker: The author of Il Postino tells another cinematic story about a young professor in Chile who discovers his long-lost father in the neighboring village.